Feature Article

Carriers: Overcome Backend Complexities to Drive Revenue Growth

The telecommunications industry is once again tilting in favor of carriers, as the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is in the process of repealing several Obama-era regulations that the governing body claims have been stifling business development. Corporate tax reform could happen at some point down the road, too, which would further benefit carriers. And some experts are predicting a telecom M&A “frenzy,” as the FCC has lifted a ban that barred carriers from engaging in merger negotiations.

Yet while the stars may be aligning for telecommunications providers, nothing is guaranteed in this competitive industry. There are still some major challenges that carriers will need to overcome in order to capitalize on favorable market conditions. According to NASDAQ, for instance, growing price competition for wireless services could lead to diminished revenue growth in 2017. And several leading cable multi-service operators are now entering the wireless field which should increase competition in an already saturated market.

For telecommunications carriers, though, overcoming market complexities is only half the battle. Many service providers today are struggling with “Franken-networks” comprised of disparate backend systems that were either purpose-built or acquired from other carriers. In this type of highly-fragmented environment, ordering, provisioning, billing and managing telephone services can be extremely challenging as prices and trends can change by the hour. It’s not easy to recognize important patterns and trends when the data is spread across multiple management programs or buried in spreadsheets.

So for many carriers, the name of the game right now is backend consolidation and optimization. Carriers are focusing on streamlining backend systems and processes in order to reduce costs and capitalize on valuable market opportunities when they arise.

Fortunately, backend optimization has gotten much easier thanks to recent advancements in the intelligent business support systems (BSS) and operations support systems (OSS) spaces. Providers like Huawei, MetaSwitch and Orca Wave now offer solutions that streamline backend telecommunications service orchestration.

Orca Wave, it should be noted, just released a new API that enables its Blue Water voice BSS/OSS platform to integrate seamlessly with third party applications. Now, Orca Wave customers can feed the Blue Water platform with critical data about contracts, carriers and numbers and then analyze the data right in a centralized, fully-automated Web-based console. The Blue Water platform can also export usage and reporting data directly to retail customers.

Want to learn more about how your company can benefit from this type of solution? Orca Wave will be on hand at International Telecoms Week (ITW) Chicago, May 14-17. You can find Orca Wave at booth 1460.